Our continent must be prepared to defend itself, by combining the best of its two most influential traditions

Should we all be Gaullists now? In the language of France’s most important European partner, the answer is “Jein!” (a German word combining ja for yes and nein for no). Yes, Emmanuel Macron has been right to warn us ever since he became France’s president in 2017 that, discerning a long-term trend of US disengagement, Europe should be ready to defend itself. Now, confronted with Donald Trump, a rogue US president putting in question an 80-year-old American commitment to the defence of Europe against Russia, lifelong Euro-Atlanticists like me must acknowledge that we need not just a Europe with more hard power – something for which I have always argued – but also the real possibility of European “strategic autonomy”. Oui, Monsieur le Président, you were right.

Yet en mȇme temps (at the same time), to deploy Macron’s signature trope, we should answer “Non”. For De Gaulle, a great man of his time, believed that defence should be the exclusive province of the nation state; that the emerging European Community should be a Europe of states (a disunited version of the European Union to which today’s hard-right populist nationalist parties dream of returning); that Britain should be excluded from the European project (hence his famous “Non!” to British membership in that emerging community); and that Europe should be constructed as a counterweight to the US, having close relations with Russia and China.

Timothy Garton Ash is a historian, political writer and Guardian columnist